Pliers

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT PLIERS - PAGE 4

Some of those vexing problems around the house are easy to solve if you know how. Here are a few handy tips to add to your how-to arsenal, courtesy of Lowe's: - To remove a broken light bulb, first unplug the light fixture. Then cut a potato in half and push the cut side of one of the halves onto the broken bulb. Twist the potato counterclockwise to remove the bulb. - Free a stuck window by rolling a pizza cutter between the stop and the sash, all the way around the window.

Like a Banana Republic vest or a mud-splattered Jeep, the little red object seems to have the magic to turn you into Amelia Earhart or Indiana Jones. It's the Swiss Army knife, and chances are that at least one person in any gathering of four or five is carrying one. The knife with the silver cross has just turned 100. Carl Elsener, the fourth son of a hatmaker, patented his "Officers' knife" in 1897. Over the years, the knife grew from a simple device with six foldouts to today's top-of-the-line SwissChamp with 31 gizmos ranging from toothpicks and corkscrews to fish scalers and pliers.

Want to know which TV design shows to turn on this week? Pamela Sherrod has previewed the shelter programs and picked 2 with the best ideas you can use. 1. `DIY Holiday Wish List' 3 p.m. Thursday, DIY Network There's not a scarf or scented candle anywhere on this shopping list from host Amy Matthews. Matthews, who also hosts "Bathroom Renovations," knows what the handyperson wants. There is a lot of whirring of machinery, but a couple of things that caught our eye for the serious do-it-yourselfer were the Husky X-Workhorse ($40)

Toolboxes are made, not born. Their contents grow in direct proportion to the number of problems that crop up in a house or apartment. Even if you aren't handy, there are everyday situations that require a hammer, a screwdriver, a tape measure or a saw. Jennifer Hunter didn't have a toolbox when she moved into her first Philadelphia apartment 12 years ago. But she soon found that, even in places with landlords and maintenance staff, one...

His right hand pinned to a desert wall, his starving, sleep-deprived body shedding six pounds a day, Aron Ralston was in a desperate search for stray calories and stray moisture. He licked and re-licked candy bar wrappers. He killed mosquitoes, then considered the nutritive content of their crushed remains. He saved and decanted his own urine. And by the sixth day, he had drunk it, the first two loathsome mouthfuls marked by a sharp saltiness that was "repugnantly tangy and bitter," Ralston writes in "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," his first-person account of staving off certain death during a solo pilgrimage in the slick-rock desert of southeast Utah.

Being a handyman around the house certainly has its advantages. When something breaks--and most things eventually do--saving yourself the hassle of trying to find someone to do the job, to say nothing of $50 to $100 or more once you do, is money in your pocket. Whether you're a skilled craftsman or a hobbyist who dabbles in woodworking, furniture restoration or crafts, you'll need tools and a space to work. Here are some suggestions about building the perfect workshop and assembling the basic tools every handyman or hobbyist needs.

Press releases I fully expect to find crossing my desk any day now: - - - The Bulls have confirmed that the "secret" additional candidate for the vacant head coaching job is noted freshwater fisherman and live-bait dealer Ira "Hip" Waders. The Bulls, however, denied a report in the Ely (Minn.) Dry Fly Journal and Walleye Wrap in which Mr. Waders was identified in a photograph as inserting a hook into Jerry Krause's jowl. A Bulls spokesman explained that Mr. Waders was actually taking the hook out. "Loyalty is a rare find these days," he said, "but irreplaceable when it comes with a set of needle-nose pliers."

Memory is a process of receiving, storing and retrieving information. It is made up of years and moments, facts and impressions, triumphs and defeats, people and events, rights and wrongs, images and even odors. It is what makes a person wonder on occasion whether some odd planetary movement has caused a recurrence in the news of Richard Nixon and the Watergate tapes, certain Ted Kennedy tendencies, political and military quagmires, women's and civil-rights battles, White House chief of staff imbroglios, CIA shortcomings and shenanigans, `60s rock groups and on and on. Memory is also what people forget with.

The omens were not good. First, Spence Petros cracked his front tooth on a 10-pound fishing line at Clearwater Lake. Split it diagonally up the side. Made a crooked smile even more menacing. You`re not supposed to bite lines, especially with clippers gleaming right there on the cushion. Then he got involved with a lake trout and forgot where he had laid the spinning rig he had just replaced. It, too, was on the cushion. Spence sat squarely upon a treble hook, impaling himself in a very unmentionable place.

For some reason, northern pike are not as trusting as bass, which innocently open their mouths as if they`d welcome a trip to the dentist. It's easy to paralyze a bass by pinching open the lower lip. Try that sometime with a toothy pike. Their mouths are like needled paddles. When the alligators hold reunions in Florida, the pike send a delegation to inquire if any are distant cousins. The fellow who owns the little lake where Mike Jackson and I fished from a rowboat Sunday wanted to know if we needed a net. I said no, because we weren`t planning to keep any of his fish.